


Apples to Ashes

by warriorpoet



Category: Fake News RPF
Genre: Gen, references to 9/11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-29
Updated: 2008-06-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 16:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/pseuds/warriorpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sense of home is an intangible thing. But sometimes you need the comfort of physical reminders.</p>
<p>Originally written for SmallFandomsFest on LiveJournal, for the prompt <i>Jon, "Carry an apple in my pocket, I write reminders on my skin"</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Apples to Ashes

On the first night after he moved to the city for good, Jon thought he might have already worn out his welcome.

The air conditioner was too small for the window, leaving badly patched up gaps on either side that sent frigid gusts of February air spiralling up the narrow space between buildings and into his room. 

He pulled balled up socks from his still packed suitcase and shoved them in between the rusting metal and the thin ply board, between the board and the sill. He fumbled until his fingers were numb and bloodless.

The wind howled, mocking his futile attempts.

Jon swore and pulled his jacket on over his sweater, wrapping himself in a shroud of blankets before attempting to sleep. 

He had just started to drift off when a piercing shriek jerked him back awake.

“Yes! Yes! Oh God!”

The wall shook. Somewhere in the building a dog started barking.

“Jesus,” he muttered, pulling the pillow over his head.

The upstairs neighbour started banging with a boot, or a broom handle, or a goddamned battering ram.

Jon groaned and launched out of bed, the blankets catching his legs. He stumbled but had reached the far wall before he even got a chance to fall. 

After flooding the room with harsh light from the naked bulb, he snatched up a pen from the dresser.

The ball point bit into the skin of his inner arm as he wrote.

THIS IS HOME NOW

He fell asleep with the words close to his eyes and woke with an inky smudge on his cheek.

It became a habit, drifting off with his chickenscratch writing in front of his eyes. He had a theory that if he took something out of his head and wrote it on his skin, he could let it go enough to be able to fall asleep. It worked, most of the time, and many was the morning that he washed a reminder about an audition or the bones of a new piece of material from the back of his hand, the words percolating in his brain as the water turned dark with ink. 

It worked. Most of the time.

\-- 

Jon walked the same streets for weeks and months, wearing in a place for himself where he fit perfectly. A tongue and groove joint, with nothing out of place.

He got jobs. He lost jobs. He quit jobs when they became too infuriatingly menial. He quit them when something better came along. 

He died on stage. He killed on stage. He lived backstage in a haze of smoke and the buzz of voices trying to one-up each other filling his ears. His own voice broke through, throwing ideas at him faster than he could catch them. There was never time to find any paper. Cigarette clamped between his lips, and pen pulled down from behind his ear, he'd scrawl his notes up and down his forearms. It was a bad habit when he did it in his waking hours. He hardly ever took his leather jacket off - it was his armour, the words on his skin his secrets, his open wounds.

But when you work in television, there's always paper around. Suddenly he had an office to go to. A desk. More stationery than he could ever find a use for. He broke himself of the habit - his neuroses didn't tend to photograph well.

Just as suddenly, he was back on the streets, The Cancelled Guy. When he left, he filled his backpack with as many office supplies as he could carry.

\--

It became clear that New York had seeped past the ink and under his skin when he moved to Los Angeles. The air was too hard to breathe. The sunshine was too hard to see through. He missed walking. He missed the narrow one way streets. 

He missed fitting in.

Jon made it in LA for three weeks before he flew back east, full of apologies for the friend who had sublet his apartment. 

Deep down, he'd known he'd be back soon. Because this was home now.

\--

I. Heart. N Y.

After so many years, Jon passed it without seeing it. It was the static you had to listen past when the radio station wasn't quite locked in.

"Are people's relatives really happy to get this shit?" he wondered out loud.

Stephen smirked when he noticed a browsing tourist lady shoot Jon the stink eye as they walked by. "What, you don't think cheap, mass produced, slogan plastered trinkets are the perfect way to say 'I crossed your name off my list of people to buy crap for during a fifteen minute crap buying spree'?"

"Exactly." Step around the slow walkers. Hop, pivot, slip through.

"Gee, Jon, shouldn't you be at your other job heading up the Visitor's Welcoming Committee?"

"Fuck you."

"Aw, come on. What's wrong?"

"You've dragged me out to Times Square, that's what's fucking wrong," Jon shot back. Roll eyes, quickly. Don't stop looking straight ahead for too long.

"It'll be worth it. I swear to you, this place has the best hot wings in midtown."

They stopped at the crosswalk on Broadway and Jon shot Stephen a skeptical look.

"You've lived here, what, five, six years?"

"Um... closer to seven now, but yeah," Stephen said with a nod.

"And you think you're gonna recommend a restaurant to me?"

"Oh, man. You are such a snob!"

"I'm not a snob, thank you. I'm just..." Jon trailed off as he skirted around another cluster of slow pedestrians.

"A New Yorker?" Stephen finished for him as they fell back in to step beside each other.

"Well... yeah." Hands in pockets. Don't bump your shoulders in to anyone.

Stephen scoffed. "And that explains it all."

"It explains why I know not to come to Times Square on a Friday afternoon, that's what it fucking explains!"

"These hot wings are worth a little tourist tolerance. Trust me."

"Jesus, enough with the hot wings!" Jon cried.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch. Hang on - " Stephen grabbed Jon's sleeve and pulled him against the store front of another discount souvenir place. "I'll be back in a second."

Jon swore under his breath as Stephen disappeared. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, wishing he wore a watch so he'd have something to look at.

He cursed again.

"Here," Stephen said, re-emerging on to the street.

"What?" Jon sighed.

"When the kids get cranky, we buy them a little something and they forget about it," Stephen said patiently, trying his best not to laugh.

Jon rolled his eyes again as Stephen dropped a bright red apple keychain into his hand.

"There. Now you can take the Big Apple with you wherever you go."

"Wow. Thank you Stephen. This mass produced slogan plastered piece of crap really says how much you care."

Stephen chuckled as Jon slipped the keychain into his pocket with a grin. They walked on.

Back in his office, Jon tossed it onto his desk with a laugh. And there it stayed, gathering dust, for fourteen days.

\-- 

Everything gathered dust in those weeks. The black clothes of mourning turned gray the moment one stepped outside. 

Jon turned the apple over in his hands, watching the way the sparkles under the enamel caught the light. The silhouette skyline ran through the middle like a scar, a cursive font proclaiming New York City the only sutures to hold it together. It felt like Stephen had given it to him in another lifetime.

Nine days later, and the cloying sense of unreality was starting to fade. Denial can be comforting for only so long.

He wondered what he would've done with this little red apple on its little metal ring if this had never happened. Would it have stayed in his office, some random trinket that triggered a vaguely pleasant memory every now and then until the memory faded enough for him to wonder why he possessed such a strange object?

He'd never know. As stupid and meaningless as it felt, he now couldn't bear to let the keychain out of his sight.

The office door creaked open.

"Hi," Stephen said softly, poking his head into the room.

Jon sniffed and wiped his eyes. It had become an automatic response - he could no longer tell when he was crying.

"Hey," he answered.

"How's it going?" Stephen sat across from him at the desk.

"Okay... well..." Jon shrugged. 

"Yeah. Well," Stephen mirrored his action. "You worked out what to say?" 

"I... I think so. No - I... I'm not sure." Jon set the keychain down and picked up a pen instead, clicking the ball point out. In. Out. He absently made a few lines on his inner arm, the first time in a long time.

Stephen plucked the keychain from in front of Jon and repeated his friend's earlier movements, watching the red sparkles wink in the bright fall sunshine. "If you wanna run anything by me, you know... bounce some ideas off. Or... whatever. I - I'm happy to help in any way I can. Or, well, try to at least."

Jon nodded slowly, chewing his bottom lip.

"You want to take a break? Come look through the archives with us. It's actually kind of fun," Stephen attempted a wry smile.

"Sure," Jon sighed, tossing the pen down. "I think we could all use some fun."

Before he followed Stephen out, he picked up the newly re-abandoned apple and slipped it in his pocket, running his thumb over that part of the skyline he couldn't stop staring at. He tugged his shirtsleeves down to his wrists, hiding the marks that had taken up residence on his arm once more.

THIS IS HOME NOW.


End file.
